Tag: Photo Walk

Jane's Carousel

This is one of several images I made during the recent Trey Ratcliff photo walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. As expected, the turnout was huge. I won't assess crowd sizes, but I think there must have been over 200 photographers at the event.

This is a three-exposure HDR (-2/0/+2) shot on my Nikon D5100 with a Tokina 12-24mm f/4 AT-X Pro DX-II (rented) and a 0.9 (3-stop) ND filter. The images were imported into Adobe Lightroom and combined in Photomatix Pro using an export preset. I applied the natural preset in Photomatix Pro and then imported the resultant image back into Adobe Lightroom for further processing.

The 35mm full-frame lens equivalent is 18-36mm f/6. The image was shot at 12mm f/8 (18mm f/11), ISO 100.

The following Adobe Lightroom adjustments were made to the HDR image.

  • Exposure set to +0.60 to brighten the image
  • Contrast to +11 to pull out more of the cloud details
  • Set highlights to -100 to reduce blown out areas.
  • Increase shadow to 75 and white clipping to 1
  • Set black clipping to 54
  • Set blue to 51
  • Set clarity to 33

There were some cranes that could be seen near the tops of some of the buildings. I didn't like these, so I imported a copy of the image (with Lightroom adjustments) into Adobe Photoshop and used content aware fill and clone stamping tools to remove them. The resultant image was imported back into Adobe Lightroom.

I then imported a copy of the image (with Lightroom adjustments) into Nik Color Efex Pro and applied the Reflector Efex preset with the setting of Gold for the method with a light intensity of 33%.

Trey Ratfliff Photowalk in New York City

You may have heard of Trey Ratcliff. After a slow start, his Stuck in Customs blog grew in popularity as did his HDR techniques and vivid style of landscape photography. He's now one of the most popular and influential photographers on the web. Alistair Arthur

Three years ago I attended one of Trey's photowalks. The New York City event was organized with the help of Scott Wyden and B& H. The turnout was impressive. It was the spectacle as hundreds of photographers walked down Broadway toward Bowling Green. At one point we chased away by New York City police who thought we were part of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

After the photo-walk, I had the opportunity to have dinner with Trey and a select few of the photographers. He's doing it again, in New York City, this Thursday 6 August from 5 pm , with the walk starting at 7 pm. It's sure to be fun. Being around Trey is magical.

Shooting with the Tribe

After the last few months of winter, I am happy the weather has turned warmer and brighter. The landscape has also turned more colourful with fresh shades of green. I am taking the opportunity, despite severe allergies, to be outside. With my camera. The family and I have been on two hiking trips and by myself, I have wandered off into the woods with my tripod and Nikon. But, for me, being outside and about with fellow photographers, talking shop, exchanging tips and learning from each other; nothing beats that. This is my tribe.

This morning I spend two hours walking through the beautiful grounds of the Leonard J. Buck Gardens in Far Hills. I car-pooled with Anjana and John. And of course, Terry showed up. I can't wait for the next one.

I decided to get down low for this. I shot mostly with my Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 but captured a few things with my Nikkor 85mm f/1.8. The rest of the photo set is on my Flickr.